Natural Selection

Natural Selection is a zany romp though a small east Texas town. Its frightened and sometimes frightening characters are drawn right out Jerry Springer's guest list. This film pokes fun at almost every aspect of life in the small towns all over east Texas.

The movie starts as a documentary about a serial killer, "Citizen Willie". In the opening scenes we get to meet three of Willie's cousins. The cousins are a clear (and hilariously frenetic) sign that all is not well in Willie's gene pool.

The movie cuts between the narrative of the story, and the documentary in a way that leaves you either on the edge of your seat or doubled over with laughter.

The best character in this film has got to be Willie's psychotic mother. We can get a real insight into what it takes to completely destroy a child's developing mind by watching this nutty bi***. If she's not pantomiming masturbation she's using a toothpick to remove the casualties of her continuing war on the fly population from a battered filthy flyswatter. To say this film is over the top is to put it mildly. Wimpy little mama's boys/girls need not apply. The laughs that come from this marvelously acted and written film will have you grabbing for your asthma inhaler (whether or not you are so afflicted).

A friend and I were invited to a special screening of 'Natural Selection' in Santa Monica this past June. As finicky spectators, we were both skeptical. We had an inkling of the film's storyline; but for the most part, we were uninitiated as to what might come to light or smolder to ash in a genre that is all too trite--a black comedy entwined with a serial killing ruse. Yet despite our snobbish prelude, by the end of the opening title sequence we were smiling. And by the end of the closing title sequence we were wildly entertained. The characters take some getting use to, all of which are satirically drawn, but once you get past introductions you realize you could be at a southern county fair and all is laughable. The film's strength is its lunacy and the direction of each preposterous circumstance. The writing is no stroke of genius, but in collaboration with the creative direction, performances, and a smart edit it is noteworthy. If 'Natural Selection' gets its audience it will be rocketed to cult film status and hence be a fusion of three genres--black comedy, serial killing ruse, and cult film. Check up and coming film festival listings or special screenings of 'Natural Selection'-- like me, you will be caught off guard and caught having a good time.

I'll avoid the obvious critique of "this movie poo poos our society's tendency to glamorize serial killers while simultaneously glamorizing serial killers." A little hypocrisy now and again never hurt anyone and certainly never stopped a movie from being made. It does make a valid point: we do like to make our worst killers into celebrities.

What does bother me is that this movie is not funny or suspenseful or scary. The only emotion this movie will make you feel is bored. The makers of this movie made it by formula, pulling every trick from every movie that everyone has seen and trying to pass it off as their own, as if a convenient bit of repackaging will make us forget where we saw that before. David Carradine: we saw The Omen. The whole movie: we saw Natural Born Killers.

Bob Balaban gives this movie its only bright spot, playing a funny, overly earnest psychoanalytical goof who feels the pain of the killers.

The movie doesn't suck, since there are movies that are much, much worse, but it doesn't entertain, either.

3 out of ten.

David Carradine (yes, the Kung Fu Carradine) plays a major role in this film, and, while he brings considerable talent to the cast -- perhaps the only talent -- much of the time he looks like an actor desperately seeking direction. I feel a little sorry for him. Carradine plays a maverick FBI agent who has gone a little haywire from brushing up against the madness of his serial killer quarry. He stays in a motel room lined with pages torn from a Bible -- a reference to The Omen in which a priest, driven mad by his quest for to confront and battle the Ultimate Evil, lives in a Bible page-lined cell. Carradine's delusional special agent sees his quarry going into a horrifically fast seizures, much like the terrifying spasms of the figures haunting the protagonist in Jacob's Ladder. There are, perhaps, hints of Pulp Fiction here and there as well. Yet these allusions are not enough to save the film -- if anything, they seem to be adolescent expressions of adulation rather than homage to the filmmaker's influences.

I saw this movie on Showtime recently and I had a ball. Sometimes it was a little rough around the edges, but I laughed a lot. Hell, the monster gags even freaked me out. Very creative film. It is nice to see that small independent genre films can still find an audience. Check it out when you can.